Strange Cat Facts

Cats can run up to 49km/h. Other times you can just lie around and play with Fur Balls.

All cat owners know that they can be fascinating and, at times, puzzling critters, so we’ve put together a list of strange cat facts that you probably don’t know. Out of respect for the time of year this is some nice easy reading for those weary Pet Parents amongst us!

The oldest living cat is Courdory from Oregon in the US who is 28 (born 1 August 1989). Courdory took over the title from Scooter, a Siamese who lived in Texas, who was 30 years old when he died earlier this year

The oldest cat ever was Cream Puff who died in 2005 at the ripe old age of 38

The smallest cat was Tinker Toy who when fully grown measured 7cm tall and 19cm long. Needless to say Tinker Toy was the runt of the litter and only survived until age 6

Cats can travel at a top speed of 49km/h. This cat obviously trained using one of our Cat Teasers

The highest number of kittens in a litter is recorded at 19. Only 15 survived.

Cats and humans have the same regions of the brain where emotions occur. It makes a cat’s brain more similar to a human’s than a dog’s

A cat can leap up to 5 times the length of its body

Cat’s jaws only move up and down, not side to side

A cat can rotate its ears 180° by using its 32 ear muscles. Humans have 6 ear muscles

In 2013 a 94 year old Italian lady died leaving her US$13 million estate to her cat Tommaso. Tommaso started life as a stray on the streets of Rome

The ridged pattern on a cat’s nose is unique. Just like a human fingerprint

There are more the 500 million domestic cats in the world

In Ancient Egyptian times when a family cat died members of the family would mourn by shaving off their eyebrows….as you do

There are over 2 million cat videos on YouTube and CNN estimated that there were 6.5 billion images of cats on the internet in 2015. I’ve contributed to that number

A cat survived falling 32 storeys with its only injury being a chipped tooth

An Australian cat holds the record for the heaviest cat (why does this not surprise me?). Himmy from Cairns weighed 21.3kg before he died from respiratory failure at 10 years old

A couple in Canada have the most number of cats. 689. Why?

In the Italian earthquake in September 2016, two cats were pulled out alive from the ruins a fortnight after the disaster

On a flight from Toronto a cat escaped from its carrier and hid behind one of the panels. He wasn’t discovered for 7 weeks by which time he had travelled 600,000 km

A poll done in Britain found over 90% of single women said men who owned a cat were “nicer”

Cat owners are more likely to have university degrees than the general population

David Cameron gave Larry the cat the official title of Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office. Larry was given his own Twitter account and he now has 100,000 followers. Larry kept his job when Teresa May became PM. She has 194,000 Twitter followers

Sir Isaac Newton invented the cat flap

A 2007 poll found men and women are equally as likely to own a cat

Someone who loves cats is called an Ailurophilia which is Greek for cat and lover